My Father's Keeper
by JPalmerGirl
Summary: Susie Q. House was diagnosed with Hepatoblastoma at the age of 3. House knows pain, he knows many things. He's not just a sarcastic, cranky bastard. He's also a father to a now fifteen year old cancer patient, who's dying. Now House's secrets are coming to light and PPTH is going to learn a lot of things through the life of a girl named Susie Q. Her father's keeper.
1. Chapter 1

_One of Susie Q.'s first and earliest memories is of her Daddy lifting her off of the ground and into her carseat. Of his strong calloused hands lifting her and cradling her as he rested her small three year old body in the booster seat. He gently took her chin in his hands and softly brushed a few small wisps of her curly red locks away from her wide electric blue eyes, eyes just like her Daddy's. It was something simple, a small motion that he'd done so many times, but her father's hand had stiffened when he saw the whites of her eyes...they weren't white. Her eyes were jaundiced...tinted a sickening yellowish color. Instantly her Daddy studied her eyes even closer, pressing her even closer to him. Susie Q. didn't understand why her Daddy hadn't said anything, he would've usually done so by then. _

_"Daddy?"_

_Susie Q. whispered and her Daddy looked at her in shock, as if he'd awoken from a trance. Slowly, he buckled her in and pressed a rough kiss to her forehead, fingering one of her light ginger curls. She giggled as her Daddy's unshaven face brushed against her soft, hairless one. It felt funny when he kissed her. _

_"I love you Susie Q."_

_Her Daddy whispered and Susie Q. reached up to stroke his face with her small and fragile hands, the older man clutched her hands gently, humming slightly under his breath and with her stumbling little voice she whispered the Hindi that her Daddy had taught her. He'd taught her many languages, Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese, Japanese, Spanish, French and Hindi. As well as the English she had learned from everybody else. _

_"Maiṁ tuma bhī pitājī sē pyāra hai." (I love you too, Daddy.)_

_She then saw a ghost of a smile spread over her Daddy's face. That was enough to make her smile. But she still didn't understand what was happening when her Daddy pulled away from her and practically ran around the car to throw himself into the driver's seat. He then pulled out of their driveway recklessly and sped down the road. _

_"Daddy? Where are we going?"_

_"To the hospital, I think you're sick Susie Q."_

_Her Daddy whispered softly, his hands tightening into a white knuckled grip on the tan colored steering wheel of his car. He couldn't bring his baby girl to PPTH, not that he didn't trust them, but it was too personal. He didn't want them to see him like this, desperate and worried about his little Susie Q...a little girl's eyes weren't supposed to be jaundiced like that, she wasn't supposed to have liver problems, she was a perfectly angelic little girl. There was nothing wrong with his little Susie Q. _

_-TimeSkip-_

_"...Susan has Hepatoblastoma, I sincerely apologize Dr. House."_

_Susie Q.'s pediatrician whispered gently as he looked at the slightly scruffy man sitting across from him, Susie Q. was in his lap, playing with a few little cars as she ran them over her short little legs, her blue eyes narrowed in concentration as she ran them up and down rhythmically. She was humming softly as she did so, the same way that her Daddy would hum when he was focusing. Her Daddy gently tightened his arms around Susie Q. so that she wouldn't fall out of his lap. _

_"Liver cancer? You expect me to believe Susie Q. has liver cancer? I'm a doctor too pal! I know that Hepatoblastoma only occurs in boys under the age of 5! Only boys! Susie Q. is three and a little girl!"_

_Her Daddy growled and Susie Q. looked up at the sound of her Daddy's agitated voice, she didn't like it when Daddy was angry. It made her feel all sad inside. Daddy should never feel angry like that. Susie Q. slowly reached upwards to tug on her Daddy's sleeve, so he looked down at her in concern. _

_"Você está bem, papai?" (Are you okay, Daddy?)_

_Susie Q. whispered in Portuguese and her Daddy's hold just tightened as he pressed her closer, burying his face in her pale ginger locks that smelled of cherry scented shampoo. Her red cotton shirt and jean overalls pressed uncomfortably against her Daddy's torso. _

_"Eu estou bem, assim como você Susie Q." (I'm fine, just like you Susie Q.)_

_The pediatrician regretfully cleared his throat, drawing back the eyes of both the frowning older man and the small red haired child in his arms. The other doctor found himself studying the little girl's jaundiced eyes again, were they jaundiced...yes...but it was also easy to the the resemblance between the child and her father, they both had the same piercing blue orbs for eyes. They were eyes that seemed to search through your soul, eyes that you couldn't tear yourself away from. _

_"There are exceptions to every rule, Susan is just a rare case. It is my belief that she can start a chemo regime here, without having to travel to PPTH. Despite it having one of the best Oncology departments in the state."_

_Her Daddy stiffened and just nodded at the other doctor before looking at him with hard eyes. _

_"Do whatever you have too. Susie Q. will not die."_

-TimeSkip(12years)-

Dr. Gregory House was yelling at his new ducklings when he got the call, he'd been writing Chase's idea on the whiteboard when he realized that it was his phone that was going off. He'd joked, he'd laughed, he'd grouches as he went into the hall with his phone clutched in a single, slightly shaking hand. He'd quickly accepted the call when he saw that it was his little Susie Q. that had called him, even though his Susie Q. wasn't so little anymore. The fifteen year old was experienced in battle, she would use terms like 'chemo', 'CAT scans', 'radiation', 'Port', 'neutropenia', 'PET scans'...even 'death.' She'd been in remission three times since that day she was diagnosed...it had relapsed each time.

Sometimes House would sit by her hospital bed as she slept, holding her hand as she drifted. It made House constantly worry. Each day she would get sicker and sicker, fade even more, it grew to terrify him, that one day he would wake up and Susie Q. wouldn't be there anymore. But there was one thing that cancer didn't understand; it didn't understand how much a father could love his child. House would do anything for his Susie Q.

"Papa? Êtes-vous là?" (Daddy? Are you there?)

Susie Q.'s voice filtered across the connection, her words in French. Something that instantly chilled House to the bone, she only spoke in French with bad news. The news couldn't be good, especially because she sounded as if she were crying.

"Susie Q.? Où êtes-vous? Vous allez bien?" (Susie Q.? Where are you? Are you okay?)

House whispered and his voice must've broadcasted his concern because it seemed like Susie tried to compose herself before talking to him again.

"Papa ... Je suis à la maison, le médecin appelé cependant." (Daddy...I'm at home, the doctor called though.)

House stiffened at his daughter's words, ever since her last relapse she'd been on a heavy regimen of radiation. The doctors were going to call them and tell them whether she was cancer-free or not. But just by her tone of voice, he could tell what the news would be. He felt a cold hand reach up and clench his still beating heart.

"Il est de retour papa. Le cancer est de retour." (It's back Daddy. The cancer is back.)


	2. Chapter 2

Being sick can really change a person. It becomes their whole identity to others, the sick kid, the dying kid...even though in their minds they are the same as everyone else. It also effects the parents, the loved ones...for Susie Q. it was her Daddy, he would put her up on a pedestal so that she was the only thing that he could see, he completely focused on her and her health, her needs. It was 'Susie Q. needs to bring her white count up?', 'Should you really be sterilizing her port like that?'...he grew to be so focused on Susie Q. that he neglected his own health, his own needs. It made her worry as she watched him pop Vicodin after Vicodin into his mouth and that shooting so long ago at the hospital? Things like that would terrify her.

She knew almost everything there was to know about her Daddy, about his addictions, his likes and dislikes. She even knew when he was lying to her about the pain in his leg...she knew that it was always hurting him and still, every time she was in the hospital, the stubborn man would insist on hanging his cane on his arm and pushing her wheelchair down the hall. No matter how much pain he was in, he would limp down the hall, Susie Q. in her wheelchair right in front of him. But don't get her wrong, her Daddy was a sarcastic, stubborn, rude, idiotic man who had no concern what-so-ever about his well being.

Seriously, the man conducted experiments on himself! Like the time he underwent hypnosis and overdosed on Alzheimer's medication to unlock memories lost after a bus crash. The latter of two which almost stopped his heart! Or the time when he injected himself blood from the same batch as a sick patient's to test if a blood transfusion caused his symptoms! Or one of the more recent times when Susie Q.'s doctors realized that her cancer had spread to her brain. Her Daddy had completely flipped out and falsified medical records to join a clinical drug trial for brain cancer and make sure that the surgery would work alright. His words were, that he didn't trust them to do it on Susie Q. first. Luckily his team managed to stop him before it progressed any further.

Then there were those times when Susie Q. loved her Daddy more that words could express. Like that time when she'd had to have brain surgery to remove a tumor from the back of her brain, she'd looked at her long, puckered and ugly scar for the first time in the bathroom of her Daddy's apartment. It was so disgusting and pronounced on her bald head that the then thirteen year old had burst into tears. She cried and cried, curled up in a ball on her bed. That's where her Daddy found her when he got off from work. He had rushed over and asked her where it hurt...only bringing on a new slew of tears and hiccuping sobs.

"Don't say it. Don't say nobody's going to stare at me, because they will. Don't tell me it doesn't matter because it does. And don't tell me I look fine because that's a lie. I'm a freak, Daddy! Look at me! Mom thought so too...that's why she left..."

Susie Q. had screeched as loud as she could before collapsing in a another gush of tearful sobs. Her Daddy had just stared at her, before walking over to the corner of her room and...dropping his pants. The young teen looked at her father in confusion as he rolled up the end of his boxers that covered his bad leg. That's when she saw it, the gnarled, puckered, disgusting scar that marred her Daddy's thigh...or what used to be his thigh. The man just looked at her with solemn eyes as she gaped at the wounded leg she had never seen before.

"Daddy..."

"We match Susie Q."

Susie Q. looked up at her Daddy when he uttered that quiet statement, the small whisper that stopped her hiccuping and choking tears. Finally with a silence raw with unshed emotion, emotion that words couldn't ever hope to express, Her Daddy pulled her into his arms and held her close, whispering sweet nothings into her ear.

-TimeSkip-

House almost felt the phone slip from his frozen, icy fingers. As thoughts of his Susie Q. filled his mind. The only thing he could remember was that day...when he'd come home to his apartment swarmed with neighbors and an ambulance. Just in time to see the EMTs wheel out Susie Q. propped up on a gurney. The young cancer patient had been as pale as a ghost, the only color on her face had been from the blood dripping down her face. Her pupils were dilated and she looked as if she were about to have a seizure. But the most terrifying thing by far had been the lack of recognition in her hazy feverish eyes when they focused on House. Just as the doctor was about to open his mouth to call out, the young girl's shoulders visibly caved in before bloody vomit spewed past her lips and she gagged into the kidney basin as it was thrust under her chin.

House stiffened in the seat of his car, his hands tightened on the wheel and his heart clenched painfully in his chest as he thought of that day. It was the first day that he actually considered how sick his daughter actually was. He could usually just brush past it with a heavy degree of jokes and sarcasm. But that, that was something that he couldn't deny. He'd only had his daughter for fifteen years. But if you took every memory, every moment, and you stretched them end to end...they'd reach forever. Forever just wasn't enough sometimes, though.

He dimly registered that he'd forgotten to tell Dictator...I mean...Director Foreman that he was leaving. But he honestly didn't care, the only thing he was thinking about was getting home to Susie Q. He had to be there, this time and every time after. He'd finally gotten his little girl back after his time in jail when she'd stayed with her mother, Stacy Warner and her new husband. Susie Q. didn't like to talk about those days and House didn't pry. When he finally pulled into the apartment building, he saw Susie Q. standing out front.

The young girl was tall and lanky just like her father, she was dressed in a yellow t-shirt and white skirt, the light and long fabric billowing around long pale legs that seemed to resemble the thin trunks of a tree sapling more then the legs of a teenage girl. Her bald head remained stubbornly uncovered and her arms were crossed over a slight chest that had yet to develop properly. Her piercing blue eyes were lined with dark shadows and you could see the outline of her port-a-cath under her shirt. That was the only evidence of her life-long illness.

As soon as House's car pulled up, Susie Q. hurried towards it, sliding into the passenger seat of his car as if it had been made especially for her, Susan Quinn House. Neither father nor daughter spoke for most of the ride. The father was angry and thinking, while the daughter was calmly waiting for her father to finish processing the news. Until finally she decided to break the silence.

"私たちは、パパ、どこに行くの?" (Where are we going, Daddy?)

Susie Q. whispered in lightly accented Japanese and House, not trusting himself to answer fully, instead said in a one word answer.

"病院." (Hospital.)

He whispered softly, his eyes shadowed gloomily as he answered. Finally resigning himself to the fact of what he had to do.

"PPTH."


	3. Chapter 3

Susie Q. honestly thought the wheelchair was unnecessary and unneeded. She was a sick, bald kid with a tube in her chest, did they need anymore indication that she was a patient? If she could walk into the hospital on her own two feet, why stop her? Its not like she'd come out the same way, if not in a body bag. But she chose to just stay quiet, mainly because her Daddy looked like he was about to crack or pass out. Neither would have been preferable at that moment in time.

When she had her second relapse, she began to have nightmares. Nightmares that her Daddy would let the doctors cut her apart piece by piece, keeping shocking her...just to keep her alive. His whole purpose was to keep her alive. She feared what would happen when she was gone.

Susie Q. almost let out a morbid chuckle as she realized something. Girls her age were thinking about the future, of jobs, of getting married and having babies. Susie Q. was wondering what would happen to her crippled, addicted father when she died soon. She had stopped going to school after her first relapse, she preferred it when her Daddy taught her at home. Even when she did go to school, she had been a loner, an outcast. It wasn't because she was strange or odd, or the fact that she liked being alone. It was the fact that she had tried to be one of them, but it had continued to disappoint her. It was overrated, normal was just boring.

She couldn't help but look around the new scenery of hospital with wide jaundiced eyes, she hadn't been into a different hospital before, especially not one that her Daddy worked at. She'd never been allowed to go there. When she was younger she never questioned it. But as she got older he told her that it was because they were idiots there. She never believed him though.

The kind and baby- faced male nurse who had come over to wheel her inside the hospital, had helped her into the wheelchair and they were partly inside before her Daddy came back from parking the car. The poor nurse almost had a heart attack at the sight of him and instantly swerved the wheelchair, sending Susie Q. toppling over onto her side. The nurse had yelped at the death glare that House sent him before he hurried over to make sure his daughter was alright. When he saw that she was fine, just scowling he let out a dry laugh.

"Clean up on aisle 4."

He had quipped cheekily before righting the wheelchair and helping her up. She had just rolled her eyes at him before smiling, she liked it when he laughed. Now he was as grim and scowling as ever as he limped with his cane in one hand and one of the handles of Susie Q.'s wheelchair in the other. It was a rather awkward procession but still necessary for everyone involved. Susie Q. found herself leaning her head into her Daddy's midriff as he rolled her down the halls and towards his office.

When they actually got inside the clear office, House stopped her next to a chair in the corner of his office. She scowled at him but the look in his eyes stopped her sharp retort. It was his 'we-both-know-you-didn't-sleep-last-night' look. She just agreed with a heavy sigh and curled up in the surprisingly comfortable chair, it didn't take long before she was asleep, covered by her Daddy's jacket and the light pink knit cap he had crammed on her head when he thought she was already asleep.

-TimeSkip-

House found himself hurriedly limping towards Wilson's office ignoring the looks people were giving him. They thought it was strange that he hadn't done something stupid yet, or the rumors that he'd been seen with a cancer patient had already managed to spread to the hospital's gossip-chain. Which he couldn't disprove. But all that took a backseat in his mind, if anyone could save Susie Q. It would be Wilson, the Wonder-Boy Oncologist, he wasn't called that for no reason. It gave House hope. He had already resolved long ago that he would never let Susie Q. die and he wasn't about to break his promise. The girl was so young, so ready to start life. She didn't know who she was yet, but she deserved to find out. She deserved the world.

Once he reached Wilson's office, he just thrust open the door. Not bothering to knock as he hobbled into the room. He was scowling, but it wasn't something intentional, just the way his face tended to look. When he entered his office he barely waited for Wilson to say anything before he thrust himself into the conversation. His voice taut with meaning and worry that Wilson didn't understand.

"House-."

"Fifteen year old girl, thrice recurrent Hepatoblastoma it's spread to her brain, the lining of her stomach and the bone marrow of her pelvis. She's tried radiation, chemotherapy. None of it has worked. She's had it since she was three years old. You, Mr. Wonder-boy oncologist, have to save her life."

House whispered flatly, trying to force his usual tones into his voice. But was utterly unable to make himself do so. The younger doctor merely raised an eyebrow at his friend's description of the patient. His voice actually made him sound as if he was concerned, something the younger doctor rarely heard from House. He had definitely never heard him talk of an everyday patient like that.

"Is she a patient of yours?"

Wilson asked curiously and House just shrugged.

"Kind of."

"Wait a minute, you said that she's tried radiation and chemo. How would you know that?"

House rolled his eyes at Wilson's question and lifted a single arched eyebrow. Was Wilson really that dim? It was obvious that he must've read that patient's history. Was it really THAT out of character for him?

"I read her history."

"You willingly read a patient's history? Just how important is this girl? What did you say her name was?"

"I didn't. It's Susie Q."

Wilson raised his own eyebrow at that, Susie Q. was an odd name in and of itself. But no last name? That was usually the first thing that House would remember. Wilson decided to take a moment to study his friend, there was a light sheen of sweat on his forehead so he was nervous about something, but whatever it was, Wilson couldn't be sure. He also, when he was looking at the list of pediatric cancer patients this afternoon, he hadn't seen the name Susie Q. admitted. True, she could've been placed under another name but it was strange. How did House know about a cancer patient before he himself did?

"No last name?"

"It's not important."

"Why?"

"It's just not, Wilson."

House bristled and Wilson swallowed in surprise, what was the deal with this patient?


	4. Chapter 4

Susie Q. woke up from her nap, feeling worse than she usually did. Which was saying quite a lot. Mentally she cursed fluently, she hadn't worn a surgical mask while her Daddy pushed her through a floor of sick people. She knew that a virus, an infection could spread fast in a body like Susie Q.'s. Yet she still resolved to just lay there, breathing evenly so that if her father came into the room, he wouldn't worry. She was afraid that one more worrisome thing could send him tumbling down with nobody there to catch him. She curled even tighter in her Daddy's jacket, pulling the pink knit hat down so that it covered where her eyebrows had once been. Her body shook with cold. She knew that her breathing was uneven, it was emerging in short pants that shook her body even more so. Yet she still let herself slip into unconsciousness.

The next time she awoke there was a dull pounding in her ears and she wondered why her Daddy wasn't back yet. Where had he gone again? Where were they? She tried to pry open her eyes but the fluorescent lights that assaulted them just made her whimper in pain and shut them again. She wanted her Daddy. Slowly she moved from where she was laying and almost toppled to the floor before her fingers managed to snag the corner of a bookcase. She stared around blearily, blinking every few seconds to keep her eyes from weeping. She needed her Daddy. She walked out slowly into the hallway, her bare feet slapping against the linoleum floors of the hospital.

Suddenly her head swam and she toppled forwards, barely catching herself on her hands and knees. She gave a soft moan and tried to stagger upwards again, just as a pair of gentle arms snaked around her and left her up. She stared hazily up at the blur with light colored hair.

"Woah! Are you alright?"

She dimly heard an Aussie accent from the man and she blinked in confusion. Were they in Australia? She let out a soft groan and leaned heavily against the helpful Aussie. Was he a doctor like her Daddy? She went to ask him but the words keep slurring around in her mouth. Her lips and tongue weren't moving the way she wanted them too. But Dr. Robert Chase just heaved her up onto a shoulder and gently carried her over to a gurney that a nurse had brought over.

When he laid the young girl into the gurney, she kept clinging to him like a baby wombat. Her long fingers were tangled into his lab coat and he couldn't bring himself to tug them away. He instead, gently rested a pair of soft and cool hands on her forehead and cherry red cheeks. The girl made a soft humming noise and leaned into Chase's cool hands. The blond Aussie doctor could definitely tell that the girl was feverish, but how badly he had no idea. All he could tell was that he girl was a feverish cancer patient and that he needed to get her to Oncology as fast as he could.

"Hey Wombat! Stop right there!"

Chase looked up in surprise as House's voice echoed down the hall, along with the familiar tapping of his cane on the linoleum. Chase just turned away from the older doctors, Wilson was jogging to keep up with the limping doctor but Chase was more focused on the feverish girl in front of him. He pulled a penlight out of his pocket and gently flashed it in her wide and jaundiced eyes, he tried to ask her questions to get some answers out of the feverish teen. Why was she an obviously sick cancer patient in the hospital but not dressed in a hospital gown?

"What's your name?"

The girl barely registered that Chase was talking and when she did, the answer that came out was so slurred that he could barely make out any of it. The Aussie doctor was about to try something else before House elbowed him roughly out of the way, so that he was in front the young girl.

"HOUSE!"

Both Wilson and Chase cried out indignantly until they realized what was happening in front of them. The girl had shuffled forwards and was leaning against House, with her long skinny arms wrapped around his neck. House's forehead was creased in concern as he cradled the girl against in chest. He was resting the palm of his hand against her forehead, humming a light tune under his breath, something that seemed to soothe the feverish girl. Then she said the first partly coherent thing Chase had heard her say.

"Daddy..."

She groaned as she buried her feverish and sweaty face into House's chest. They honestly expected House to flinch away, to say some sarcastic comment about how the girl wasn't his. Because really...House couldn't be a father. He was immature, childish, irresponsible, lazy, loud and obnoxious. He couldn't be like that if he had a child, especially a child with cancer. But House didn't pull away, didn't flinch. Instead he just scooped her even closer and whispered gently.

"Daddy loves you too Susie Q. Susie Q. você se sente doente, bebê? Onde é que dói?" (Susie Q. do you feel sick, baby? Where does it hurt?)

House added the second part of the sentence in Portuguese. He knew that she liked that language when she was feeling bad. The girl curled up even closer to him and moaned her answer softly and hoarsely under her breath, it was slightly slurred but House knew how to translate Susie Q.

"Estou me sentindo doente papai. Podemos ir para casa agora?" ( I feel sick Daddy. Can we go home now?)

House shook his head softly at Susie Q.'s request. He knew how much she wanted to go home but he couldn't let her leave when she was this sick and it truly pained him to tell her so. Especially when she looked at him with those wide and pitiful eyes that so mirrored his own. That was the first time he understood how a human being could see themselves in their own child. He saw himself in Susie Q. He also saw that you didn't need to be coherent to cry.

"Você não pode ir para casa ainda, bem. Temos de fazer o melhor, ok?" ( You can't go home yet, sweetie. We need to make you better, okay?)

House crooned gently before scooping up his daughter with one arm and clutching his cane with the other. He then turned around to where Wilson and Chase were gaping at him in utter shock. He then proceeded to prod Wilson with his cane and roll his eyes.

"Come on, Wilson. You have to admit her and treat her for neutropenic fever."

House growled, his eyes flat and serious with worry. The Oncologist hurried over and moved to help House carry the girl but House just glared at him sullenly. When Susie Q. was sick he grew to be very possessive over his child. He didn't like anyone carrying her but him. That was an intimate and private father-daughter thing that he didn't want to let anyone else feel.

"Are you really her father, House?"

Wilson whispered, his eyes scanning the body of the thin cancer patient that House was carrying. The older doctor nodded slowly, his eyes softening as he looked at his child, the mistake he thought he made. She was nothing of the like.


	5. Chapter 5

"Are you really House's daughter?"

Susie Q. was lying in a hospital bed, she was obviously more coherent now after receiving some treatment. But when she caught a view of herself in a reflective surface, she realized how bad she actually looked. The thick blue veins were overly apparent in her bald skull, her teeth were tinted yellow and crummy, her jaundiced eyes now had thin red veins crisscrossing across the once whites of her eyes and her lips were peeled and chapped. She looked like she had cancer. Susie Q. almost cracked a smile at that. She turned to answer Dr. Chase's question before her Daddy poked his head in the door, making sure she was awake before thrusting himself inside.

"Yo Baldy, you alright?"

House asked nonchalantly. (But both Chase and Susie Q. knew that he'd been pacing around the outside of her room until she was awake.) As he walked in, Susie Q. could see his eyes widening a fraction as he saw how bad she looked. But Susie Q. made sure to send him a quirked smile and stuck out her tongue childishly, before actually answering his question with a straight face.

"Hey Cripple, I've been bett-."

The end of her sentence was choked off as her hands flew upwards to cover her mouth and be the dam to stop the impending flow of vomit and bile, at least until her Daddy could grab something for her to puke in. House, after spending chemo round, after chemo round with his daughter. He knew to always have a puke pail nearby. That is what they had both dubbed it. House quickly snagged a kidney basin from the night-table beside her bed and popped it under her chin. She vomited noisily into it, yellow bile spewing out of her mouth and nose. Chase flinched away involuntarily but House bravely held his ground, even when her vomit just about splashed on his hands.

"You're okay Susie Q."

House whispered as she heaved over and over, bringing up small bits of half-digested food, bile and gunk. It gushed from her nose and mouth at the same time and she whimpered at the horrible burning sensation. She hated the feeling of it, hot, sour and acrid over the bumpy plane of her tongue. Finally she just dry heaved into the basin, and even that stilled eventually but it left her utterly exhausted and panting roughly. House gently set down the basin and felt her forehead gently.

"It's a low fever but still a fever. We think you have the flu, that coupled with a high fever and neutropenia resulted in this."

House whispered softly as he pressed a stubbly yet gentle kiss to his daughter's forehead. The girl smiled softly in response, her voice was hoarse and strained as she tried her hardest to speak to him.

"When are you planning on shaving the squirrel off your face, Daddy?"

She whispered hoarsely, and House rolled his eyes comically as he pretended to glare at his cheekily grinning daughter. He never could get really mad at her, she was never really bad. Not in anyway that you would expect of a normal teenage girl, she wasn't a normal teenage girl that was clear enough. Normal teenage girls don't get cancer. Normal teenage girls don't learn they can't ever have children, right before their fourth birthday. Normal teenage girls aren't dying.

"Cute, real cute."

House made a face at the girl, who in turn made one right back at him. Chase lightly chuckled under his breath as he watched the exchange between father and daughter. Now that he really looked at the teenage girl when she was lucid, she did look just like House. The eyes were exactly the same, wide, piercing and bright as they stared around the room. He gently tugged the knit cap tighter around her head and slowly lowered the front of her bed.

"Sleep."

He ordered gently and Susie Q. slipped into the calming world of unconsciousness to the light humming of her Daddy in her ear.

-TimeSkip-

"She's my daughter too, Greg!"

"Really? Well where were you when she had to get four blood transfusions in a row?! Where were you when she lost all her hair?! Where were you every time she's cried, puked, coughed, passed out, bled out, hyperventilated, gone neutropenic, or gotten a fever in the last, what...fourteen, thirteen years?! You had her for barely a few months, I've had her since she was barely a toddler!"

"So you're what now, 'Dad of the Year'?"

"No! All I'm saying, is that the only reason you're here is because you think she's about to die!"

Susie Q. stiffened as the yells of her parents reached her ears. They'd been fighting whenever they met up ever since she could remember. Which was a pretty long time in her book. She wondered if her Mom was here, then Mark and Ronan were too. She just curled up tighter in her comforter, burying her face in the starchy white hospital that had been placed behind her head.

"Are you alright?"

She looked up at the sound of a new voice, it belonged to a rather short man with a pointy nose and balding black hair. He smiled at her kindly and tucked the sheets around her body tighter. She smiled back at him and extended a single pale hand, the one that didn't have a taped IV protruding from the backside of it. The small man happily shook her hand, taking extra care with it as if he was scared that she would break like a fragile little twig on a summer's day. Something that she obviously was not in any way, shape or form.

"Dr. Chris Taub."

"Susan Quinn House, but you can call me Susie Q."

The man, Taub, smiled again at the mention of her odd nickname. He opened his mouth as if to say something else, but just as he was going to, the door to her room burst open and a little ginger haired blur darted over to her bed and tackled her into a long limbed hug.

"SISSY!"

He bellowed and the five year old buried his face in Susie Q.'s chest happily. The fifteen year old grinned and laughed merrily, pulling the little boy's shirt up and lifting him up backwards to blow a raspberry into his tummy. The young child squealed in delight and struggled in her arms as she gave him another. House followed the child into the room and stood beside Taub as they watched the scene unfold. Taub was staring at the boy to House in a silent question of parenthood. But the older doctor shook his head.

"Stacy and Mark's son, Susie Q.'s half-brother."

He explained softly, too quiet for them to hear. He didn't want to break up the happy reunion between them. Ronan stared at his sister for a moment, as if drinking in the appearance of the older girl. Then he slowly reached out a ran a gentle hand over her bald, hairless scalp.

"Sissy, where did all your hair go?"

Susie Q. stiffened at the young boy's question question, before sighing softly and pulling her baby brother into her lap, pressing a gentle kiss to his forehead as she did so. So nobody had explained the cancer to Ronan then. That was understandable. The last time he'd seen Susie Q. she had short ginger hair and was in remission. Now it was gone...both her hair and the short-lived remission.

"I'm sick, Ro."

"Is that why you're at the doctor's house?"

"Uh huh."

She whispered, Ronan looking at her with his warm brown eyes up and alert. So unlike Susie Q.'s blue and jaundiced ones. They made her heart clench in her chest as she looked at him. But it had to be said.

"I'm sick with something called cancer."

"...is it my fault? Are you going to leave?"

Ronan whispered hoarsely, his eyes wide and brimming with tears as he gaped at his sister, his beloved sissy. Who in a way, had just told him that she was dying. That she wasn't going to be around anymore, something that made Ronan feel sad. He remembered in his first grade class that somebody had a mommy who had died from cancer. Died is when you went on a long trip to a far away place...you just don't come back. Thy was what his mommy told him. Was Sissy going to die too? Ronan just looked up at her tearfully, she was making a light choking noise and her face was turned away.

It wasn't until Ronan was a grown man that he realized...she'd been crying.


End file.
